Are chatbots necessary? Organisations have found it helpful for making their websites interactive and conversational

Chatbots are a good way to answer a lot of customer service questions, including the hard questions that trip human support staff or end up consuming a lot of their time. (representative image)

Chatbots are performing automated repetitive tasks like showcasing menu items, making recommendations based on the needs and interests of the customer, and obtaining opinions and feedback from customers. In turn, companies are focusing their workforce on more vital tasks and eliminating the need for customers to wait for human responses. But are these the only reasons for chatbots? Why are businesses implementing chatbots? What are the primary obstacles with chatbots?

In India, public sector businesses and government agencies like the National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI), Indian Railways, and Bharat Petroleum are increasingly using AI chatbots to answer user questions, ticket booking, customer support, and other forms of citizen engagement. While these were business-focussed tools, the entry of ChatGPT has widened our perceptions about chatbots.

To compete with the extremely successful ChatGPT, Google has introduced its own chatboat Bard, which is very similar in nature. Bard is Google's answer to the growing popularity of chatbots like ChatGPT, which has attracted users with human-like responses and an easy-to-use user interface. The likelihood of ChatGPT revolutionising search and even the workplace is now one of the most talked about issues.

Why Use Chatbots?

Organisations are adopting chatbots with conversational AI capabilities due to their wide range of advantages. According to research published by Maedche et al, AI chatbots are here to stay with systems capable of fast improving human-like interactions. Meta reports that between June 2016 and April 2019, the number of chatbots on Facebook Messenger increased from 11,000 to 300,000.

Some of the benefits are:

• AI chatbots like Cleverbot provide interactive, engaging, personalised activities and add value to improve interactions between customers and employees.
• Customer loyalty increases, brand image is built, and employee productivity rises thanks to personalised and immersive customer and employee experiences.
• Conversational AI chatbots like LivePerson and Netomi are already  available in the market, which can precisely predict what customers want and generate specialised responses and even upsell by providing tailored product recommendations, since they learn from previous interactions and any new data that enters the system.
• The return on investment is likewise substantial because such bots depend on their taxonomy and cognitive ability to give self-service remedies at scale.
  

Privacy is a significant challenge that people worry about when using chatbots. It is essential to keep the input and output databases of the bot safe so that sensitive company information or private user information doesn't get stolen. Users need to know that their questions and interactions with bots will stay private and safe.

Chatbots and other forms of communication should also show empathy and sensitivity when responding to users. They must understand when users are getting frustrated by their responses and quickly offer human interface.

Most web data is secure, but if you add some chatbots to it, you can only be sure that the API will be safe. Data leaks and hacking will likely happen if proper security measures aren't taken. Each business needs to focus on encrypting its channels so that no data is leaked, especially when dealing with sensitive information.

Finding Middle Ground

AI technology is already ubiquitous, assisting with tasks such as detecting credit card fraud and turning speech into text. Nonetheless, ChatGPT has raised the bar, and technology will inevitably become increasingly vital to our everyday lives as we rely on digital assistants and online tools.

Simultaneously, the Google DeepMind AI chatbot Sparrow is also being refined.  Whereas, Bard is a conversational service designed to compete with the Microsoft-backed ChatGPT application, Sparrow is an attempt to offer next generation AI services that can outdo ChatGPT.

Chatbots are a good way to answer a lot of customer service questions, including the hard questions that trip human support staff or end up consuming a lot of their time. They help answer inquiries because, among other things, they are good at producing text. The most important aspect is that 24*7 support makes the user happy but doing away with human interface is risky too as many a time users can also get frustrated with chatbot answers.

ChatBots, which are just software, tend to make mistakes too. Bots act as a link between a business and its customers. But if something unexpected happens that wasn't part of the plan, their performance gets worse. So it is logical that chatbots have first been introduced to reduce and ease repetitive tasks. It is the next stage of their evolution that worries many people. No matter what kind of technology it becomes, it is up to us to use it wisely.

Nivash Jeevanandam writes stories about the AI landscape in India and around the world, with a focus on the long-term impact on individuals and society. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.